Russell Crowe eyeing lead role in Arc Of Justice opposite David Oyelowo

An upcoming courtroom drama based upon the groundbreaking Clarence Darrow-Ossian Sweet civil rights case may have landed itself quite the star. Variety reports that Russell Crowe (THE MUMMY) is currently circling the lead role in ARC OF JUSTICE, that of famed lawyer Clarence Darrow.

Russell Crowe is still a ways off from signing on the dotted line, but should he join up, Crowe would star alongside David Oyelowo (GOD PARTICLE). Oyelowo has already closed a deal to play Ossian Sweet in the film, which is set to be directed by Jose Padilha (ROBOSCOP). Based upon Kevin Boyle’s non-fiction novel "Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age," ARC OF JUSTICE centers "on a racial incident in 1925 Detroit that put African American doctor Ossian Sweet on the stand for murder. His defense was funded by the nascent National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and led by Darrow."

In 1925, Detroit was a smoky swirl of jazz and speakeasies, assembly lines and fistfights. The advent of automobiles had brought workers from around the globe to compete for manufacturing jobs, and tensions often flared with the KKK in ascendance and violence rising. Ossian Sweet, a proud Negro doctor-grandson of a slave-had made the long climb from the ghetto to a home of his own in a previously all-white neighborhood. Yet just after his arrival, a mob gathered outside his house; suddenly, shots rang out: Sweet, or one of his defenders, had accidentally killed one of the whites threatening their lives and homes.

And so it began-a chain of events that brought America's greatest attorney, Clarence Darrow, into the fray and transformed Sweet into a controversial symbol of equality. Historian Kevin Boyle weaves the police investigation and courtroom drama of Sweet's murder trial into an unforgettable tapestry of narrative history that documents the volatile America of the 1920s and movingly re-creates the Sweet family's journey from slavery through the Great Migration to the middle class. Ossian Sweet's story, so richly and poignantly captured here, is an epic tale of one man trapped by the battles of his era's changing times.